Gravity is relentless and aging is inevitable. Together these ineluctable forces wreak havoc on our bodies, wrinkling us, thinning vertebral discs, weakening our bones, making us more susceptible to sickness and disease. But perhaps most vulnerable to the depredations of time and gravity are a woman's breasts which succumb to sagging due to the tug and pull of gravity.
Essentially, there are three known available means to provide or maintain attractive breasts. They include the use of support garments, cosmetic surgery, and exercise. Support garments can shape and support breasts in appealing ways. However, while offsetting some of the effect of gravity, brassieres do little to change or enhance the immediate appearance of the breasts themselves. Cosmetic surgery, while providing a quick and sometimes dramatic result, is dangerous, expensive, can result in long term health problems and an unnatural feel.
Exercise has none of the problems or limitations of cosmetic surgery and support garments. Outside of cosmetic surgery, the only effective means of enhancing breast appearance is to exercise the muscles supporting the breasts. But in contrast to cosmetic surgery, exercise is healthful and has long term health benefits, and in contrast to support garments, exercise actually changes the breast themselves.
Breast appearance cannot be improved by exercising the breasts since they do not contain muscle tissue. Breasts are composed of fat, glands and connective tissue. Sagging occurs when the skin and connective tissue stretch or break down due to gravity or through the loss of elasticity from aging. Sagging can also occur after a significant weight loss or a pregnancy, when skin and ligaments are temporarily stretched due to increased breast size.
Breasts can only be sculpted by increasing the mass of muscles supporting the breasts. Breasts are supported by the pectoral muscles, including the clavicular and sternal parts of the pectoralis major. The pectoralis major is a large muscle that spans both sides of the chest, originating at the medial two thirds of the clavicle, the anterior surface of the sternum, the cartilages of the first six ribs, and the slip from aponeurosis of external oblique abdominal muscle. Building the pectoral muscles generally produces about the same effect as breast augmentation surgery.
When breasts are surgically augmented, the effect is to urge breast tissue into the covering skin, thus making the breasts firmer and more buoyant, disposed more outwardly from the chest, rather than sagging or drooping downwardly. Building pectoral muscles accomplishes the same thing. The increased muscle mass pushes breast tissue outwardly and into the skin, thus tightening the skin and pulling the breasts upwardly. Additionally, breast appearance is enhanced by increasing the mass and tonicity in the pectoralis minor, the anterior deltoids, the serratus anterior, the coracobrachialis, and the subscapularis.
These muscles can be addressed in a conventional resistance training program of weight lifting. The better known suitable lifts would include the bench press, the inclined and declined presses, parallel bar dips, dumbbell or “pec deck flys,” and dumbbell or barbell pullovers. But such a program entails the use of heavy weights and the execution of difficult, strenuous lifts. It may require the acquisition of a weight set or access to a gym facility, and some of the lifts can be genuinely dangerous if heavy weights are used without a spotter.
Therefore what is needed is a lightweight portable apparatus providing a simple, convenient, and inexpensive means to strengthen and tone the chest and shoulder muscles to lift and firm the breasts.